Learning Words by Using Them

I’ve lost count of how many “revolutionary” vocabulary apps and glossy, colour-coded word mats have been shoved into my department over the last two decades. They all promise the same thing: a magic bullet for literacy. But let’s be honest—most of these high-concept strategies are designed for a classroom that doesn’t actually exist, one where every student is sitting perfectly still and every teacher has an hour of prep time. When you’re staring at thirty-two teenagers in a room that’s far too hot, trying to figure out how to learn vocabulary that actually sticks, you don’t need a digital subscription or a complex linguistic framework; you need something that survives the chaos of a Tuesday afternoon.

I’m not here to sell you on the latest educational fad or a pedagogical theory that hasn’t been tested against a restless Year 9 class. Instead, I want to talk about the unsexy, practical reality of making words stick. I’m going to share the low-prep, high-impact methods I’ve used for nineteen years—the ones that work when you’re exhausted, when the marking is piling up, and when you only have five minutes to make a difference. This is about meaningful retention, not just filling a notebook for the sake of a folder check.

Active Recall Techniques for the Exhausted Learner

Look, I know the drill. You’ve seen the posters in the staffroom promoting elaborate spaced repetition systems that require twenty minutes of setup per lesson. In a perfect world, we’d all be running digital flashcard apps with surgical precision. In my world—the one where you’ve got thirty-two teenagers in the room and the heating has just gone on the blink—that’s a fantasy. If a strategy requires more prep than the actual teaching, it’s going to fail by Tuesday.

Instead, we need to lean into low-stakes active recall techniques that don’t feel like a chore for you or them. I’m talking about the “last five minutes” rule: instead of a formal quiz, just throw a word on the board and ask them to link it to something they learned last week. It’s about learning words in context rather than isolating them on a sterile list that they’ll forget the moment the bell rings. We aren’t trying to build a linguistic museum here; we are just trying to make sure the words actually stick when they leave the room.

Learning Words in Context Over Rote Memorisation

We’ve all seen it: that list of twenty “Tier 2” words scribbled on the whiteboard, followed by a thirty-minute period of students dutifully copying definitions into the back of their books. It feels like work. It looks like progress. But by the time they get to their next lesson, those words have already evaporated. The problem is that we treat words like isolated objects to be collected, rather than tools to be used. If you want them to stick, you have to stop the “list and drill” cycle and focus on learning words in context. A word doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it exists in a sentence, a mood, and a specific relationship with other words.

When I’m mentoring trainees, I tell them to ditch the isolated definitions. Instead, try to anchor the new term to the specific text or historical event you are actually studying. If you’re teaching the Industrial Revolution, don’t just define ‘urbanisation’; make them use it to describe the shift in the maps they’re looking at. This isn’t about adding more to their plate; it’s about making the existing content do the heavy lifting. When a word is tied to a concept they already understand, it stops being a chore and starts becoming part of their toolkit.

Five Ways to Make Words Stick Without Losing Your Sanity

• Stop the “Word of the Day” charade. If a word isn’t useful to them by the time the bell rings, it’s just more noise. Instead, pick three words they actually need for the task at hand—the ones that unlock the meaning of the text—and live with them for a week.
• Use the “Low-Stakes Retrieval” trick. Don’t hand out a formal test; that’s just a recipe for anxiety and marking fatigue. Instead, start the lesson by asking them to write down three words from last Tuesday on a scrap of paper. It takes two minutes, and it tells you exactly who’s actually learning and who’s just nodding along.
• Ditch the dictionary for the sentence. A list of definitions is a graveyard for memory. If they can’t use the word to describe something happening in the classroom or something they actually care about, they haven’t learned it; they’ve just borrowed it for the exam.
• Visual cues aren’t just for the primary years. Even for my Year 10s, a quick, messy sketch on the whiteboard next to a complex term does more heavy lifting than a paragraph of academic jargon ever could. It gives the brain a hook to hang the concept on when the reading gets heavy.
• Embrace the “Spaced Repetition” that doesn’t involve apps. You don’t need a fancy software subscription to do this. Just revisit those same five target words in a different context three days later, and then again a week later. It’s not glamorous, and it’s not “innovative,” but it’s how long-term memory actually works.

The Reality Check: What Actually Sticks

Stop chasing the “perfect” vocabulary list; if you can’t use the word in a sentence by the time the bell rings, you haven’t learned it, you’ve just briefly stared at it.

Prioritise low-stakes retrieval over high-effort prep—it’s better to spend five minutes testing three words they actually need than an hour prepping a glossary they’ll forget by Friday.

Focus on the “why” and the “where”—a word only becomes part of a student’s toolkit when they see it working in a real text, not just sitting lonely on a flashcard.

The Myth of the Word List

“We spend far too much time handing out lists of words that look impressive on a printed handout but end up as nothing more than litter for the classroom floor; if a student hasn’t had the chance to wrestle with a word in a sentence that actually means something to them, they haven’t learned it—they’ve just briefly borrowed it.”

Ellery Mwangi-Selkirk

The Reality Check

Look, we’ve covered a lot of ground, from ditching the endless, soul-crushing lists of definitions to actually using retrieval methods that don’t require you to spend your entire Sunday prepping. The takeaway isn’t that you need more resources; it’s that you need better ways to use the ones you already have. Whether it’s pulling a word from a previous lesson during a chaotic transition or forcing them to use a new term in a sentence rather than just circling it on a worksheet, the goal is the same: moving words from a temporary mental scratchpad into long-term memory. We have to stop chasing the “perfect” vocabulary system and start focusing on small, repeatable habits that actually survive the reality of a Tuesday afternoon when the energy in the room is bottoming out.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what your students “should” know, take a breath. You don’t need to overhaul your entire scheme of work by Monday morning. Teaching is a marathon run through a swamp, and sometimes the most radical thing you can do is simplify. Focus on a handful of high-impact words, embed them into the conversations you’re already having, and let the rest of the noise fade away. At the end of the day, we aren’t just teaching words; we are giving them the tools to understand the world. If you can make that happen—even if it’s just one word at a time—you are doing the work that matters.

About Ellery Mwangi-Selkirk

Most educational advice is written for a classroom that does not exist — twenty motivated pupils, unlimited preparation time, no behaviour to manage. I write for the room you are actually in. What retrieval practice looks like when marking is already three weeks behind, why the seating plan matters more than the starter activity, and which of the last decade's initiatives left anything behind. Nineteen years taught me that the good ideas survive contact with a wet Wednesday and the rest do not.